Futura Free

Album: Blonde (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • The final and longest track on Blonde, this is broken into two sections. The first part finds Ocean reflecting on his life and rise to fame in a stream of consciousness style. He recalls working on his feet "for seven dollars an hour," Tyler, The Creator sleeping on his sofa and Jay-Z hitting him on e-mail. Ocean also tells his momma that he's surprised he's now getting paid "400, 600, 800k" doing what he loves, admitting he "should be paying them."
  • The second part is a series of interviews carried out by Ocean's younger brother Ryan Breaux in which Mikey Alfred, Sage Elsesser, Na-kel Smith and other Illegal Civilization members are asked simple biographical questions such as: "What's your name?" or "What's your first memory?"

    After the interview was added onto this song, Ryan expressed his excitement and gratitude.

    "MY INTERVIEW IS ON THE ALBUM OHMGMDJSHCJAJDHAHHSH I WAS LIKE 11 MY VOICE WAS SO HIGH," he tweeted after hearing the track. "THIS IS WORSE THAN MY YEARBOOK PICTURE".
  • The track contains a sample of Gang of Four's "(Love Like) Anthrax" from their 1979 EP Damaged Goods. Gang Of Four's Andy Gill told Brooklyn Vegan how Frank Ocean's management got in touch with him in November 2015 explaining that the singer was building a song which featured a loop from 'Anthrax' and requesting permission to use it.

    "My first thought was that this is fairly unusual for people to be that up front and honest," said Gill. "Most bands just take Gang of Four ideas and dress them up a little and call them their own!

    His manager, Wendi, played Frank's track down the phone to me as we were driving somewhere on the west coast on our tour bus which was a little bit surreal as I couldn't properly hear it," he continued. "But I think Frank Ocean is great and I was aware that he was a big fan of Gang of Four."
  • Futura is a typeface designed in 1927 by designer Paul Renner, which is based on geometric shapes representative of the Bauhaus design style. The word does not appear in the lyrics, and the reason for its use in the song title is not clear. Some fans have suggested it may be linked to the fact that Futura is the favorite typeface of the movie directors Stanley Kubrick and Wes Anderson, who Ocean has bigged up in the past.

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